Ask Lemmy

They have millions to spare every year, yet their hosting costs is just a couple thousand.

And yet they insist on community moderators, who aren't trained, paid or impartial. A lot of the information on the site has been quite terrible recently.

Meanwhile, they beg and beg for more money. Where that cash goes? Well a big chunk of it is labeled "other" and "community projects". They currently have about 250 million sitting in the bank. Enough to keep their hosting services running for over 400 years if their funding were to abruptly stop.

And then still, they accept grants on top of donations.

If you use it frequently, and have money to spare for that (after maybe considering other projects that may better align with you personally), yes.

I donate a small amount every year. Before now, I had not given much thought about its internal politics or whether they really need it to stay afloat (my contribution is too small to make a difference anyway).

To me, it's more of a way of being thankful for having ad-free content with a good enough material.

I worked for them ten years ago. I was excited to do something important for once. And it was better than competing with Amazon for book sales. I was really helping.

I eventually left because I didn't think we were being a great steward of donor money. And I didnt have the best relationship with my boss. Nice guy, but we didn't clock.

Back then they spent like half their money on donations and programs trying to get more editors. That included supporting projects in smaller languages and diversity on current projects. Mostly good stuff as far as I could tell.

Where they invested their money for tech was where I disagreed. But even so, I've donated since then. They are supporting important work. Everyone makes mistakes.

Ultimately, I dunno.

Yes definitely. Anything that spreads knowledge should be hugely supported.

Be very suspicious of anyone advocating for less support of knowledge sharing.

maybe redirect that to archive.org

I feel like they need it more... they've just been hacked and they might need more resources to upgrade their security.

But both are good causes. But make sure you have enough emergency funds saved for yourself first.

Edit: Another argument for archive.org over wikipedia is that wikipedia is mostly a text based site. archive.org , in contrast, can store photos, videos, software, and various media thay requires more storage. The entire English wikipedia is only about 100GB (excluding videos), but archive.org is probably in the Terabytes or more.

I don't anymore.

they do not need your money, and it's disingenuous of them to imply they do.

The manipulative aspect of their annual fundraisers is very unsettling.

here are some numbers from 2022:

https://unherd.com/newsroom/the-next-time-wikipedia-asks-for-a-donation-ignore-it/

they have at least 400 million in reserves now and the estimate is $10 million a year to maintain the site and pay all their employees.

their higher executives are each paid hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

they're not struggling to keep the lights on for the next half century.

Read this and then decide for yourself: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer

I used to donate, but I haven't for at least 10 years.

Their financing is public. They would have enough cash to keep the lights on for decades.

They've been investing to be reliant on donations in the future. I see a conflict of interest there and I'd rather have them be relying on donations.. especially since they have received enough cash to do so.

TL;DR, I'm happy to donate for running Wikipedia, not happy to donate for them to become a fund.

Right now, I'm leaning towards "no" on account of them allegedly being awash with money.

In the vein of alternative places to donate, consider your Fediverse instance(s). If you're a Linux user, a few pennies towards your distro of choice wouldn't go amiss either. (I'd also say archive.org, but someone else suggested that already.)

You may already be donating to these places, but this comment is also for the handful of other people who might see it, and like one of those arcade coin waterfalls, might trickle down into the conscience of someone who has cash to donate.

I have in the past, but at this point I need my money more than they do, and even if I get a job where it becomes financially possible to donate, there are other organizations that need it more than Wikipedia

I am not sure whether the wikimedia foundation actually needs money from individuals. From what I could find by searching "Does Wikipedia need donations", they seem to have plenty of money. I've also seen from people that after donating, they like to haunt your email inbox for more money.

I myself prefer donating elsewhere instead. In my opinion a good alternative is archive.org. It's hard to track how much they get sued, and now they even were hacked recently.

I do.

I think that it's one of the services that dramatically enhances not just my online experience, but also the world's. And I'd rather have it donation supported than ad-supported or similar.

There aren't many services that I'll donate to, but this is one.

You’re better off shooting your instance the money, but Wikipedia has remained a genuinely good quality company. If you want to give them money in recognition of this fact, no one sane will call you a dumb dildo with hairy feet.

You have my permission

yes

Yes

I do not. Not as long as Jimmy Wales is involved with it. I strongly disagree with his objectivist philosophy.

There are certainty worse places to send your money, though.

I barely have two dollars to rub together and I still try to

I guess I'm probably overdue to make a donation myself

If you do, their e-mails asking you to donate again are a bit weird and manipulative. Their subject lines are like "FIRSTNAME - I've had enough", "Our final email" (got several of those), "It's non-negotiable".

Do you use Wikipedia? If so, yes.

If you can afford it, yes. If you use it, yes.

Maybe not each year. I mean, I donate a couple hundreds every few years because back in those days I certainly was not paying for a brand new printed encyclopedia every single year either ;)

i think it's mostly for maintaining the servers, the actual article writers are random people on the internet, who probably recieve no money

No. The articles are written by volunteers and will not be improved by your donation.

In theory, your donation does keep the servers running, but they have plenty of money to do that, and most of the money nowadays goes to paying way too many employees many of whom don't do anything very useful or important.

You know how people will donate money to streamers if they do stupid stuff? If you can do that, you can do this.

Yes.